grief party mixtape
by Mileva Anastasiadou
1.The Crack
Anthem/Leonard Cohen
It started out as a crack, after the earthquake, and I didn’t even notice it at first, that’s how small it was, but then another earthquake happened and the crack grew bigger, and I didn’t mind again, because then light slipped into the room, and I lay on the floor, eyes closed, and I almost felt the weight of the sky breaking into the house and falling onto me, I only opened my eyes when the first drop of rain fell onto my cheek, and I panicked, because through the crack now entered darkness and water and before I knew it, I was soaked up to my throat, and wanted to fix the crack that grew bigger and bigger, until thunder entered the house and I stood there, doing nothing, because I didn’t know how to fix that stupid crack, I had no ladder, or money or anything, and I had to find another home soon or I’d end up drowning, and I had no option but to leave, let it all fall apart, and I opened the door, and I ran and ran and ran, but I could still hear the echoes from the house I left behind, where the music played on at the grief party, a slow, heavy waltz for everything I lost.
2.The Gap
Burn/Cody Crump
The gap may have been there, but it grew big after I lost Dad, when I asked to be alone and grieve, but I didn’t want to be alone, and when I was left alone, I panicked and blamed you for leaving me alone, and you stared like you had no idea what to do next, and I stared back, waiting for a warm hug, a pat on the back, a gentle touch, and I thought that you should have known, but you didn’t, and then I saw the gap, the gap that had been there for years, hidden under blankets, until Dad died and took those blankets away, and only darkness shone through that gap, the kind of loneliness that hurts the most, and you only turned away, you wanted to pretend the gap wasn’t there, but the gap grew bigger and bigger, and I fed it when I left and looked for comfort elsewhere, and when I came back you said that I should have asked, and that you’d be there beside me if only you knew, but this stupid gap was too big already and I had no idea how to fix it, and we let it all crumble down, what we had been building together for years, because we couldn’t fix that small gap when we first saw it, and then it was late, we sat and watched it grow wide, wide, wider, while the music played on at the grief party, filling the silence between us, turning the gap into a wall.
3.The Fissure
Their Law/Prodigy
We’re rich and famous and invincible and people think we’re smart too, and perhaps we are, but I find us dumb, actually, the way we spend money and destroy things, then when we run out of air and land and time, and when there’s nothing left but money, we spend more money to escape. There is a huge fissure, up on the mountains, that grows bigger by the minute, and we can fix it, but we have claimed otherwise and we have shouted that we can’t for so long, that even we believed our lies. The hole had been there, a glitch in the matrix, it turned into a huge fissure, and like the gap that separates us from them, the hole grew bigger and bigger, and at first we considered fixing it, and we hired workers, then we fired the workers and we hired robots, but then came the analysts, they said, don’t bother, it’s not cost-effective, and we left it there, because it didn’t bother us, we had money to move away from it, but the hole grew like a monster, and swallowed people, and villages, and countries, still we didn’t care because we were safe, and only now we care, now that it has come closer, now that it tears the whole place apart, now that we feel the warm kiss of the void on our neck, we are rich and famous and terrified, and we build bunkers and spaceships, but we’re doomed, and the music plays on at the grief party, a distorted, violent roar that drowns out the screams of the world we broke.
4.The Abyss
Fire Water Burn/Bloodhound Gang
We sit in the heat until it becomes our skin, because it’s easier for us to imagine our ashes scattering than it is to imagine holding a hammer and fixing the frame. We’ve reached the abyss, the great numbness that settles between us, and we don’t even argue anymore, we don’t post our anger or scream our grievances, because there’s no use in shouting at a void that has already won. We stand at the edge of this vast canyon, watching the ground crumble beneath our feet and the roof burn, and we don’t give a damn about it, because we romanticize and embrace indifference, and we play cool and do nothing. We don’t even reach for each other’s hands, because we don’t know how to fix cracks, or gaps, or fissures. People let the world burn because there is no water to put out the fire, but sometimes they’re too lazy to look for water, and there are people who have water but do nothing because they like fires, they sit and watch the world burn and we let them, like we follow a script we’ve memorized so well that we’ve forgotten it’s not ours and we didn’t write it, and the music plays on and on and on at the grief party, when we throw our hands in the air as instructed and wave them like we don’t care, and we sway till the end.
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